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Kathrin Ansorge and Daniel Ris have built a flourishing restaurant with little money. But the lack of vacation business now ruins everything. It is not just for them. A Zurich restaurateur says: “They offer me two or three restaurants every day.”
It took Kathrin Ansorge and Daniel Ris years before their restaurant finally flourished.
“Transit” is written in white and green letters above the entrance to the wooden barracks with a corrugated sheet roof. In the warm October sun, the small esplanade with garden tables, palm trees and colored lights looks like an oasis: outside on Aargauerstrasse, cars and trucks pass by.
If a restaurant’s location is your capital, then Kathrin Ansorge and Daniel Ris are not exactly blessed. His “transit” is in one of the strangest areas a restaurant in Zurich can imagine: surrounded by Strichplatz, SBB service facilities and asylum accommodation. Perhaps it is this mixture that attracts people.
A lunch in “Transit”, for example, looks like this: employees of the tax office sit on a plate of empanadas with risi-bisi, in the background, Eritrean children surround the containers that are their home, laughing, and then a red sports car arrives from which emerges an older man in a gray toupee and a blue denim jacket. He is Jean-Pierre Grätzer, the great master of Zurich’s nightlife. “Dani, do you have a Zigi for me?” Everyone knows each other here. Guests are as diverse as the surroundings. “Everyone comes to us from AL to senior vice president,” says Ris.
Ansorge and Ris have built a thriving restaurant in this strange place over the years. “Our trustee recently commended us for the first time,” says Ris. 2019 was a good year, finances were finally balanced. However, the meeting with the administrator was not pleasant. It was about whether the two owners can somehow avoid having to fire all the employees. The answer: no.
The losses brought about by the Crown crisis were already quite large. But with the growing number of cases, the Christmas business has now also sunk. “Normally we have about fifty groups in the run-up to Christmas, now there are three Christmas dinners,” says Ansorge. And maybe these are now canceled too. Unfortunately, they have no choice but to fire the staff. “Accumulating a mountain of debt is out of the question for us.” The two of them now want to go to a dive station, as Ris calls it.
The uncertainty is great
Currently, many companies are canceling or restricting their Christmas dinners and the public administration is also reluctant. At the request of the Department of Health and Environment of the city of Zurich, it is said that it is recommended to eat in small groups at most and avoid standing snacks. Ultimately, the decision rests with the heads of service. Especially in the health sector, that is, in homes and hospitals, one is strict.
Even in the canton, Christmas dinners are not explicitly prohibited, at least until now, as the finance department says. However, the administrative units would carefully examine what is possible and safe for all involved. In some cases, Christmas dinners have already been canceled or not even announced.
Restaurants feel it fully. This is also the case for the Bindella Group with its 44 locations in German-speaking Switzerland. There were hardly any reservations, says Rudi Bindella Junior, and the few existing reservations were canceled on short notice. “The damage is immense.” Because November and December are the most important months for the company. Fortunately, they could still work for a short time, says Bindella, “that’s existential for us.”
The Christmas business can hardly be saved with alternative concepts. “With the increasing number of cases, the uncertainty among people is simply too great.” From Bindella’s point of view, offering more outdoor spaces doesn’t solve the problem. “That might work with fondue, but guests don’t want to eat pizza and pasta in the cold.” At least one tries to make business customers palatable by giving employees vouchers as an alternative to Christmas dinner, with which they can go out to eat individually.
At Michel Péclard, whose Gastro GmbH pump station includes thirteen companies in the canton of Zurich, it sounds similar: “In the last few days, sales have really collapsed.” They are normally 70 percent busy with Christmas dinner, now nothing happens. But I understand the heads of companies. They fear that entire departments will have to be quarantined. “
Unlike Bindella, he wants to try to keep the outdoor spaces as open as possible and hopes for more small groups to come. “Fortunately, things went very well for us in the summer. But the situation is very difficult for all those who are taking advantage of the winter business. “
Built with little money and a lot of commitment
“Combine social with fun”, Ansorge and Ris dared to venture into gastronomy with this motto. At first it was just a food truck on the Binz, a Ford Transit, hence the name of the current restaurant. In 2012 they moved to Aargauerstrasse. The “Hüttli”, which is now his restaurant, was already there, although in a very rudimentary state: “Basically there was water, electricity and a roof,” says Ansorge.
With little money and a lot of work, they would have turned it into a restaurant. “It was chaos, we had to build with garbage, but we never got into debt,” they say. They wanted to grow slowly and they did. So little happened in the early winters that afternoons were spent in the restaurant playing Scrabble. But the business grew year after year. They were able to recruit staff, including former residents of the asylum center. And they are loyal to them. All employees have been with us for at least five years. But the crisis is now ruining the works.
An oasis in a peculiar place: the “Transit” is surrounded by Strichplatz, the SBB service center and the asylum accommodation.
Daniel Ris likes metaphors. He likes to compare the “transit” to a flower: normal operation with lunch and dinner is the stem, necessary but not very profitable. Newspapers are the weekend events – birthdays, weddings, funerals – “this is how we make our money.” Bloom is the season of Christmas: In the weeks leading up to Christmas Eve, profits come in to save the restaurant during the weak winter months. Leaves and flowers are missing this year, the stem alone does not make a flower. “If we reach 55 percent of sales this year, we can be happy,” says Ris. Because they have low overhead costs and are debt free, they can afford to close for a few weeks.
“They offer me two or three restaurants a day”
This winter could be difficult for some hosts. Urs Pfäffli, Chairman of Gastro Zürich-City, has no figures on possible bankruptcies. But he is in close contact with trustees and caterer providers, “and they describe a dramatic situation.” Sales to vendors have plummeted by as much as 40 percent, which is a good indication of how poorly restaurants are doing. “For innkeepers who live explicitly from the winter business and, for example, have large salons, or for catering companies, it is now very difficult,” says Pfäffli.
Advise owners to implement security concepts optimally to build trust with guests. But Pfäffli looks forward to the future, “if people go back to work more in the home office or if things like Christmas lights on Bahnhofstrasse are dispensed with, fewer people will come to town and therefore fewer guests to the restaurants”.
Michel Péclard also observes the situation with concern. “Right now, they offer me two or three restaurants a day to take over; the owners would even give up renting them entirely for a while.” But even if he sees himself as a positive-thinking person, Péclard is careful about new projects. ‘Development is extremely uncertain at the moment. What if unemployment now rises dramatically: people still eat out? “
Don’t forget the social aspect of restaurants
Ansorge and Ris see the crisis as a setback, but not as a coup de grace. “We want to go back and we think it will work.” After all, they recently signed a contract for another seven years. Perhaps, says Ris, there is also something positive in the matter: “We can take a step back and think about how we want to further develop” transit. “It is true that the issue is not easy for the employees, but they responded with understanding. Perhaps also there is a future for them in “transit.” Ansorge and Ris don’t want to complain, but something bothers her: “When people say that a crisis like this is good because it also cleans the industry, then they forget about the social aspect that restaurants have. Where should people be able to meet, especially at this time? “
